Field of Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to robot path planning. Specifically, the disclosure relates to a robot assisted method for deploying sensors using an efficient sensor deployment policy.
DESCRIPTION OF RELATED ART
As the earth's population continues to grow, so does the demand for energy resources. The finite quantity of currently known energy resources has also spurred demand for new energy resources, and this demand for new energy resources has driven oil and natural gas exploration. Reflection seismology is a technique from geophysics which enables petrochemical industries to explore geographic regions without having to drill, in order to directly determine whether, and to what extent, oil and gas may be present.
A time-dependent perturbation of an elastic medium such as the earth's crust, generates elastic waves which propagate outward from the source regions. The reflection and scattering of these elastic waves, called seismic waves, can be used to characterize the structure of the scattering elastic medium. In reflection seismology, this is done by placing point sources and point receivers on the earth's crust. The point sources emit a known time-dependent perturbation, and the point receivers measure the earth's response at its surface. Determining the underground structure based on the response measured by the receivers is an inverse scattering problem. An accurate determination of the response of the earth's surface requires a large number of sampling points on the surface, and a seismic sensor deployed at each of these sampling points.
However, the geographic regions that contain oil and natural gas are frequently located in remote and desolate locations. Thus, the deployment of sensors in these regions is arduous and sometimes dangerous. Accordingly, there is a requirement for a technique of deploying sensors in an efficient manner.